Leave the Rest to Heaven
by ficlicious
Summary: Emily's retirement was peaceful and boring. Then the geth attacked Eden Prime, and suddenly, retirement was out of the question. Told on the periphery of Shepard's storyline, this tale looks at the other people in the ME universe, and how they might have stepped up to fight for the right to survive.


**_Do your duty and leave the rest to heaven.  
- Pierre Corneille_**

_Eden Prime_  
_2183_

As was her custom, Emily cleaned her rifle before she went to bed. She could strip, clean and reassemble it in under a minute, but she no longer had those sorts of constraints on her time. She dawdled over the sight, lingered on the stock, took extra care in making sure the Naginata Mk V was in perfect working condition and firing order before she placed it back on the rack on the wall of the prefab domicile. All in all, ten minutes of her time wasted. A new personal best. Last night had been nine and three quarters.

She moved to the window, limping slightly on her bad knee, the one not even the Alliance docs with their fancy tech could make work properly again, and leaned against the side of it, staring over the darkened public square her particular prefab trailer shared with eight other prefab trailers. It was nothing to look at, that square. Just a mostly-empty patch of grass and dirt, with the occasional cargo container still shoved off to one side, and a footworn path leading off to the next section of living quarters that looked exactly the same. All was quiet on the Western front, as her father had once said.

Sometimes, she hated being retired.

It hadn't been her wish, nor had it been her choice in the first place. But when shrapnel tore up tendons and cartilage and skin and muscle to the point where even the cutting edge of medicine couldn't fix better than new, that was the only choice N7 gave its problematic officers. At least it had been an honourable, medical discharge. She could have been tossed out on her ass, facing criminal charges that would end up with her locked away in Leavenworth or, worse, Purgatory.

She sighed through her nose, pushing away from the window and crossing back to the small kitchenette. Eden Prime. Choicest spot for colonization in the whole damn galaxy. She knew people back home on Earth who would have cheerfully murdered their closest friends for a shot at coming all the way out here, even so far away from the Citadel and Alliance protection. What the hell was she doing here?

She made herself a cup of oolong in the dark, the leaves only a few days old from the local farmer's market. Eden Prime. Why not just go ahead and call it Earth Two? It was nearly identical in atmosphere, gravity, mass and solar cycle. Far less crowded though, and maybe that had been the point. No one could bother out here, wouldn't even if they could. The cost of getting from Earth to Eden Prime was astronomical enough to be deterring, and that was partially why she'd chosen it. Out here, she could be left alone.

She sat at her table, sipping her tea and staring blindly at the far wall as she did so. Also, as was her habit. She could have had her omnitool call up local entertainment programming, or at least the news, but why bother? Nothing ever changed on Eden Prime. It was boring, backwater and quiet. She had wanted it, after all, so now she'd just have to live with it.

She put her now empty cup in the refresher for the morning and limped over to her bed, still made with military corners, where she unceremoniously flopped down after stripping her pants and shirt. After a moment's thought, she got up and cracked the window directly over her bed open. It was supposed to be a scorcher of a night, with summer coming on. And Emily Wilcox fell asleep into dreams, as she always did.

**oOoOoOo**

Hours later, she awoke to twilight and a racket. Confused, she sat up rubbing her eyes, her feet blindly questing for her slippers. She slipped them on, snatched her robe up from the chair next to the bed, and belted it on while she went for the front door. She poked her head outside and instantly regretted it as the loudest, longest, deepest musical note she'd ever heard resonated her skull so hard she thought it was going to burst open.

She slapped her hands over her ears, reeling back inside and almost frantically kicking the door closed again. A wet trickle on her lip and the taste of blood on her tongue when she licked it informed her she had a nosebleed, but Emily couldn't stop to tend to herself now. Old instincts, dormant until now, were rising to the fore again, rusty but reliable. She took three quick steps, ignoring the sharp pangs of pain shoot through her bad knee, and snatched her rifle off the wall with one hand, fishing a handful of thermal clips out of the cabinet with her free hand. She slapped it into the rifle, which powered up with a satisfying _clikwhine_, and Emily smiled grimly.

That was better.

More settled with a weapon in hand, Emily crept back to the door of her home, cautiously sliding it back open. The sky was full of black clouds and an ominous red glow that hurt her eyes to look at too long. Lightning flashed across the clouds, as crimson as the stains. It wasn't even near the time for rain, yet the smell of ozone hung heavy in the air.

With no immediate answers in the vicinity, Emily raised her rifle and swept it downwind, scanning through the scope for anything unusual. What she saw nearly made her have a heart attack. Through the magnifying scope, with which she'd ended many a Cerberus agent with no one the wiser, she saw only distant trees and blurry grass and the sharp, uncompromising lines of prefab housing... until she saw the big, black leg. It was so mindblowingly big, Emily thought it might be a smear on the lens, and pulled the Naginata away to polish the scope with the hem of her shirt. And then she saw the Thing.

It was impossibly big, black as the emptiness between stars, towering over even the tallest building by more than a factor of two, and it was moving, She stood agape for long moments, until a metallic, sliding chitter pierced the haze that surrounded her. While her brain was still trying to remember what to do, her body called on muscle memory, and she brought the scope back up to her eye with an effortless swing. She peered through the gap, and nearly bit her tongue off as her breath hissed sharply in through her nostrils.

Cylinder-headed, humanoid figures that shone like metal and moved like water.

Geth. They had to be.

What the hell were geth doing here? They were supposed to be deep inside the Terminus Systems, not here, in the frontier lands. Emily retreated back inside, taking a slow, mental ten-count, but no one seemed to be inclined to come check to ensure her particular home was empty. She sighed again, this time in relief, and made the quick decision to throw the last of her irreplaceable items in her go-bag, a military green duffel she kept in a constant state of readiness.

Deciding that she didn't want to face the end of the world with her boobs only covered by a few very thin layers of silk and wool, she took the extra thirty seconds to haul on her uniform, another thing she'd never bothered turning in. Surprisingly, though she hadn't worn it in five years, it still fit around the middle. Which was a good thing. She didn't mind dying, if it came to that, but it seemed undignified to do it in a bathrobe and bunny slippers.

**oOoOoOo**

Emily lay flat on top of her neighbour's prefab, methodically adjusting the sight to compensate for distance and wind resistance. Times like this, she really missed Guerrero, her spotter. Everything might be run by VI these days, but there was something about having another person's voice in her ear, calmly dictating the adjustments to environmental conditions.

She sighted down, watching the geth come in pairs and trios, firing at the citizens of the arcology. Warily, she raised her head long enough to glance at the towering monstrosity of a ship - it couldn't be anything else, not a life form at that size - but it hadn't moved in minutes. With a pursing of her lips, she returned her attention to the problem she could deal with.

She lined up a shot on the middle geth in a trio coming up the road, dragging a couple of unconscious or dead humans between them. They were more than a mile away, but Emily knew she could drop all three in five seconds or so, depending on how fast their programming reacted to her attack. After another moment of hesitation, in which the geth not carrying any bodies produced some device or another it planted on the ground and knelt to fiddle with, she tapped in the omnitool code to activate the incendiary capabilities of her thermal clips. It would make her trajectory easier to backtrack if the shots were lit up like tracers, but incendiary rounds packed more bang for their buck.

Inhale, exhale. All three geth were grouped fairly close together; if she could cause one to explode, there was a chance it would take out all three.

Inhale, exhale.

Inhale.

Squeeze.

Exhale.

The distant explosion lit up the night like fireworks.

There was no recoil, but the noise of the thermal clip discharging was louder than she remembered it being. Only muscle memory, hard as hell to forget, kept her from jerking back in surprise and jigging the shot. The next shot was harder, because now they were moving. They were damaged, she saw as the barrel of the Naginata swung minutely, tracking their progress. Burning bits of their comrade had smashed through their shells, punching tiny holes in their armor.

Emily smiled grimly, lining up her next shot. The crosshairs centered on the smoking microcrater in her next target's cheek analogue.

Inhale. _Squeeze_. Exhale.

_Boom_.

The third geth apparently learned from its comrades' demises, for it ducked behind a stack of shipping crates, out of her line of sight. She swore in three languages, the only words she knew in two of them, and gritted her teeth as she raised herself to a kneeling position, snapping closed the tripod and propping the rifle against the edge of a shipping crate of her own. She could only see a bare sliver of the geth's cranium, but Emily had stood amongst the most exalted of the N7 corps of snipers. All she needed was a sliver.

In moments, the third geth had joined its brethren in exploding, and Emily moved towards the edge of the domicile. She could hear footsteps, too heavy and regular to be human, marching from further down the street. She had already pressed her luck as it was, taking three shots from the same position, and incendiaries at that. She slung the rifle over her shoulder by its sling, and slid down the ladder the way all recruits were taught.

She regretted it the instant she landed, as white-hot pain shot through her knee when her leg impacted the ground. Her bad knee, already stiff and protesting from the position she'd forced it in to take the shots, screamed loud enough to blur her vision. Emily was nearly done for then and there, as she crumpled helplessly against the wall of the prefab, clutching her knee and sweating with the effort to not shriek in pain. The footsteps of the approaching geth grew louder, until a burst of gunfire from somewhere back the way they'd come drew them away again.

Emily groaned in relief as the blinding throbbing subsided in her knee and winced as she tried putting weight on it. What the hell had she been thinking, playing soldier with the knee she had? Those days were long behind her. Her best shot was to get to the spaceport and try and hitch a ride off Eden Prime. With that thought in mind, and the dull ache spiking up from her knee to remind her, she slid the rifle off her shoulder, using the butt as a cane, and hobbled her way as best she could in the narrow corridors behind prefabs and laboratory buildings.

**oOoOoOo**

Her bad knee screamed white-hot agony every time she put her weight on it, and her steps came slower and shorter. Whatever way she'd jarred it coming down from that ladder had done some damage to an already damaged joint. Her breath hissed in and out of her chest, ending on a whine every time she gingerly stepped forward. On foot, she knew she would never make it. But knowing that wasn't a deterrent. She didn't give up, ever. Miracles had happened, and so she would keep going.

Several times, she had to stop to wait for geth patrols to go by, closing her eyes and ears to the human prisoners they had with them. While she longed to do something to help them, there really wasn't much to be done. She was one woman, practically useless; her capture or death would do nothing in the end. The prisoners would still end up with their fates. It was one of the harder lessons she'd had to learn during her time in the service, but learn it she had. She couldn't save everyone, and there was no sense in playing the hero. She had to pick her battles, and this was not one of them.

She leaned against the side of the prefab to wait for another patrol to go by, checking the charge on the thermal clip. She had an extra in her pocket, picked up as she crossed through the aftermath of a firefight. She had maybe three shots left on her current clip, and who knew how many on her spare. The odds weren't good for her.

She caught movement in the corner of her left eye, and nearly jumped out of her skin when a ghostly face appeared in the glass beside her shoulder. She slapped a hand over her mouth, to belatedly stifle the gasp of shock. The face belonged to a woman, wide-eyed and pale, who stared at Emily as if seeing a phantom. Emily closed her eyes briefly, leaning against the side of the prefab as she got her heart rate back under control again. When she looked back, the woman had vanished from the window.

There was an idea, she thought. She could find a vacant prefab, lock herself in and hunker down until the geth were gone. The idea had appeal, and for a long moment, she wavered on the edge of doing just that. But there was no guarantee that the invaders wouldn't check residences. The geth, if that's what they were, were unknown qualities, and that Emily had seen, had no real purpose. Some dragged humans, some just marched. Others patrolled. There was no rhyme or reason to their tactics.

And even if they left without checking the residences for stragglers, there was no guarantee they wouldn't just nuke the entire planet. Without knowing their ideology, Emily's best chance lay at the spaceport, getting off-planet. She pushed herself away from the wall, grinding her teeth against the resurgence of pain so hard she nearly broke one. She limped on, leaning heavily on her rifle, knowing she wouldn't make it and still walking nevertheless.


End file.
